- To provide an easily accessible source for students to refer back to whenever they have questions in regard of the things taught in class, so that they could both assess the progress of the class and evaluate their own learning progress.
- To provide clearly guidance and instructions for students to work on their individual assignment while at the same time trying to encourage the idea of collaborative learning ( i.e. by the introduction of peer review system and giving suggestions and comments to each other with the use of Diigo )
- To motivate students to continue to polish their English even when it is out of school hours by using this website as one of their windows. It is hoped that it would help to lead them to the many resources on the internet that they could easily get accessed to whenever they want to improve their English. For instance, students who might be more interested in watching tv/ movies might check out the session - 'Fun Corner' to look for things that might interest them and yet English oriented, such that they could have fun while immersing in the language, i.e. improving their language skills.
Targeted Learners:
An elite Form 1 English class a band 1 EMI school. The rather young age of the target group arouse my attention as to how the course website should be designed mainly in terms of how much written instruction should be involved and whether there might be a serious need in increasing the amount of pictures and widgets in the website, as young children might usually have less patience in reading long paragraphs but more motivated to participate if the amount of concentrated reading is lessened and that other widgets such as videos and pictures are involved in gaining their attention.
Justifications on using the chosen technology - Wikispaces and Diigo:
First of all, wikispaces is chosen to be the place for me to set up my own course website because as mentioned in the lectures earlier, there are definitely more autonomy for me to decide on the structure, style and the format of how I want the whole site to appeal to my students. For blogs/ discussion forums, since I would have less control as to the structure and the style of the way I want the content to be presented to students, I think they are not that suitable. This would especially be the case when regarding my session of 'Fun Corner', it is because for that part of the course website, it is not aimed at building on what students might have learnt in class, instead I am aiming at including as much variety of widgets as possible as my purpose is to appeal to as much students of different multi-intelligence as I could, so I would want as much autonomy as possible when writing my own website.
Through the use of wikispaces, students are also allowed a larger autonomy in how they want to organize/ present their writing, they would probably enjoy it better than writing their work on paper as in the traditional way. Especially when they could also include pictures / other widgets into their own wikispaces. It might probably imitate the real life writing now, which is particularly true for my unit here, since it's about informal letter writing, which now most should be conducted in the form of an email/ facebook comment, with which most of these now allow widgets and pictures to be inserted.
Diigo is chosen to let students to give comments on others' work because of the highlighting features and the sticky notes that students could be able to use to highlight that exact phrase they like about their peers' work. These would not be possible if students are asked to give their comments as a form of discussion post/ a reply to a blog. This means that Diigo allows students to give comment in a more convenient way and effectively.
Ways to prepare students for the activities: - to go through the technology once during class such that I could make sure most students in the class do know what is going on.
- take students to the computer lab and let them have a try with the technology first
- to remind students of the importance of valuing these online activities and doing those evaluating activities ( i.e. they are given the chance to improve their own English and also learn from others )
- to tell them clearly that all these online activities will be assessed as well, such that it could be ensured that they would work their best to produce meaningful work.
Potential pitfalls of Wiki/ Diigo:
- Some students might still have problems in working with wiki even if the technology might already be gone through once in class
- There might still be students who are inactive in participating in the collaborative activity, in the sense that they do not try to read and comment on other people's work at all.
- Students might misuse the two technologies. For instance, they might post irrelevant material to others' work/ even comments that purposefully attack others.
Objectives:
- To provide an easily accessible source for students to refer back to whenever they have questions in regard of the things taught in class, so that they could both assess the progress of the class and evaluate their own learning progress.
- To provide clearly guidance and instructions for students to work on their individual assignment while at the same time trying to encourage the idea of collaborative learning ( i.e. by the introduction of peer review system and giving suggestions and comments to each other with the use of Diigo )
- To motivate students to continue to polish their English even when it is out of school hours by using this website as one of their windows. It is hoped that it would help to lead them to the many resources on the internet that they could easily get accessed to whenever they want to improve their English. For instance, students who might be more interested in watching tv/ movies might check out the session - 'Fun Corner' to look for things that might interest them and yet English oriented, such that they could have fun while immersing in the language, i.e. improving their language skills.
Targeted Learners:
An elite Form 1 English class a band 1 EMI school. The rather young age of the target group arouse my attention as to how the course website should be designed mainly in terms of how much written instruction should be involved and whether there might be a serious need in increasing the amount of pictures and widgets in the website, as young children might usually have less patience in reading long paragraphs but more motivated to participate if the amount of concentrated reading is lessened and that other widgets such as videos and pictures are involved in gaining their attention.
Justifications on using the chosen technology - Wikispaces and Diigo:
First of all, wikispaces is chosen to be the place for me to set up my own course website because as mentioned in the lectures earlier, there are definitely more autonomy for me to decide on the structure, style and the format of how I want the whole site to appeal to my students. For blogs/ discussion forums, since I would have less control as to the structure and the style of the way I want the content to be presented to students, I think they are not that suitable. This would especially be the case when regarding my session of 'Fun Corner', it is because for that part of the course website, it is not aimed at building on what students might have learnt in class, instead I am aiming at including as much variety of widgets as possible as my purpose is to appeal to as much students of different multi-intelligence as I could, so I would want as much autonomy as possible when writing my own website.
Through the use of wikispaces, students are also allowed a larger autonomy in how they want to organize/ present their writing, they would probably enjoy it better than writing their work on paper as in the traditional way. Especially when they could also include pictures / other widgets into their own wikispaces. It might probably imitate the real life writing now, which is particularly true for my unit here, since it's about informal letter writing, which now most should be conducted in the form of an email/ facebook comment, with which most of these now allow widgets and pictures to be inserted.
Diigo is chosen to let students to give comments on others' work because of the highlighting features and the sticky notes that students could be able to use to highlight that exact phrase they like about their peers' work. These would not be possible if students are asked to give their comments as a form of discussion post/ a reply to a blog. This means that Diigo allows students to give comment in a more convenient way and effectively.
Ways to prepare students for the activities:
- to go through the technology once during class such that I could make sure most students in the class do know what is going on.
- take students to the computer lab and let them have a try with the technology first
- to remind students of the importance of valuing these online activities and doing those evaluating activities ( i.e. they are given the chance to improve their own English and also learn from others )
- to tell them clearly that all these online activities will be assessed as well, such that it could be ensured that they would work their best to produce meaningful work.
Potential pitfalls of Wiki/ Diigo:
- Some students might still have problems in working with wiki even if the technology might already be gone through once in class
- There might still be students who are inactive in participating in the collaborative activity, in the sense that they do not try to read and comment on other people's work at all.
- Students might misuse the two technologies. For instance, they might post irrelevant material to others' work/ even comments that purposefully attack others.
-->> Comments for two members in the class:
- on Sally's Writing Blog
- on Kim's Writing Blog